UC BerkeleyUC Berkeley Previously Published Works

TitleWhite Space and Dark Matter: Prying Open the Black Box of STS

Permalinkhttps://escholarship.org/uc/item/6363n9zr

JournalScience Technology and Human Values, 43(2)

ISSN0162-2439

AuthorMascarenhas, M

Publication Date2018-03-01

DOI10.1177/0162243918754672 Peer reviewed

eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital LibraryUniversity of California

Article

White Space andDark Matter: PryingOpen the BlackBox of STS

Michael Mascarenhas1

AbstractTo a packed audience in Clark Hall, Sheila Jasanoff, a distinguished scholarand former president of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), gavethe plenary address for “Where has STS Traveled,” a commemorativegathering of the fortieth anniversary of the inaugural meeting of the 4S. Notonly was this meeting located in the very same (renovated) room as the firstgathering, but also many of the original members had traveled from far andwide to Cornell University to reminisce and reflect on the academic fieldthey had established, as well as imagine the possibilities of the next fortyyears. In response to a question about the direction of STS, ProfessorJasanoff suggested that the 4S had not turned its reflective gaze inward toexamine the politics of its own society, nor had it spent much effortinterrogating the society’s contribution to social policy or enduring socialproblems. As I heard Jasanoff speak about our collective need for reflectionand reflexivity, I had to wonder whether, and to what extent, we wereready to reflect on the subject matter of race and racism in this mostlycolor-blind field of inquiry.

1University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Michael Mascarenhas, University of California, 130 Mulford Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.

Email: mascarenhas@berkeley.edu

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Keywordswhite space, dark matter, race and racism, institutional diversity

To a packed audience in Clark Hall, Sheila Jasanoff, a distinguished scholar

and former president of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), gave

the plenary address for “Where has STS Traveled,” a commemorative

gathering of the fortieth anniversary of the inaugural meeting of the 4S.

Not only was this meeting located in the very same (renovated) room as the

first gathering, but also many of the original members had traveled from far

and wide to Cornell University to reminisce and reflect on the academic

field they had established, as well as imagine the possibilities of the next

forty years. In response to a question about the direction of STS, Professor

Jasanoff suggested that the 4S had not turned its reflective gaze inward to

examine the politics of its own society, nor had it spent much effort inter-

rogating the society’s contribution to social policy or enduring social prob-

lems. This idea of a “reflective turn” generated much animated discussion

and became a focal point for many at this important institutional meeting. I

was asked by the conference organizers to talk about the matter of race and

racism in STS. As I prepared to speak, I wondered whether, and to what

extent, we were ready to reflect on race and racism and why they remain

unstudied topics in STS.

Sociologist Winant (2015, 1) termed race and racism the “‘dark mat-

ter’ of the modern epoch” because, like its namesake in astrophysics,

dark matter makes up much of the universe but remains invisible and not

well understood. From this perspective, race and racism are as much a

part of modern science and technology as they were of the rise of

capitalism itself. Colonialism, slavery, nationalism, eugenics, and even

the rise of the enlightenment culture were all premised on genocide,

ethnocide, and benign neglect of the darker races (Winant 2015). With

few notable exceptions (Bliss 2012; Braun 2014; Browne 2015; Hogarth

2017; Zimring 2016), race and racism have not been given serious

attention in STS, despite their central role in producing and shaping

technological change (Fouche 2003; Roberts 2011) and in marginalizing

and discriminating against people of color (Benjamin 2016; Morning

2011; Roberts 1997). As STS has elevated the importance of context

in both theory and practice, it has ignored how race and racism have

influenced and continue to shape the social, cultural, and political fabric

of modern capitalism.

152 Science, Technology, & Human Values 43(2)

The Elephant in the Laboratory

STS scholars have helped to elucidate how science, nature, and knowledge

travel under the deceptively simple banner of the “social” (Haraway 1997;

Latour 1987; Nelkin 1995; Sismundo 1993). “Today,” Trevor Pinch

asserted, “STS has arrived,” because the acronym no longer requires clar-

ification. Moreover, STS scholars have contributed to a growing body of

literature that argues that the category of race must be understood and

studied as a political, social, and cultural construct (Fujimura and Rajago-

palan 2011; Rajagopalan, Nelson, and Fujimura 2017). Despite such

accomplishments, STS has remained noncommittal when it comes to the

racial discord that divides US cities, suburbs, streets, and campuses.

Moreover, given the popularity of color-blind explanations, which posit

“contemporary racial inequality as the outcome of nonracial dynamics”

(Bonilla-Silva 2010, 2), institutional and systemic racism, settler colonialism,

and white supremacy continue to be the dark matter of contemporary race

relations—external to the structure of society. Shielded by color blindness,

“Whites can express resentment toward minorities; criticize their morality,

values, and work ethic; and even claim to be the victims of ‘reverse racism’”

(Bonilla-Silva 2010, 4). In effect, safeguard their racial interests without

sounding “racist.” Yet race remains the most important single variable deter-

mining opportunities and life chances in the United States and elsewhere

around the globe. People of color face discrimination in employment, educa-

tion, and housing; the health-care system; the criminal justice system; and the

banking system, which skew opportunities and life chances along racial lines

(Lipsitz 2011). In effect, much remains to be known about how racial oppres-

sion actually works in contemporary society (Alexander 2012; Benjamin

2016; Blackmon 2008; Lipsitz 2011; Mascarenhas 2012; Roberts 1997; Zimr-

ing 2016). Color blindness represents, among other things, a real reluctance to

debate and theorize contemporary forms of racism, and this reticence has

morphed into silence and denial. “Our” contribution to this white space is that

those able to influence the direction of scholarship, funding, and curricula have

continued to ignore the significance of race and racism in questions of STS.

This special perspective piece explores the black box of race and racism within

STS in an effort to generate further discussion and debate among us.

The White Space

In this article, I use what sociologist Anderson (2011, 2015) has labeled “the

white space” to describe the discipline of STS. For people of color in

Mascarenhas 153

particular, white spaces vary in kind, but their most visible and distinctive

feature is the overwhelming presence of white people and the absence of

people of color (Anderson 2015). Whites’ spaces are not just about counting

but rather accounting for the ways that the dominant culture adopts a white

habitus that is stratified by color (Anderson 2015). This white space is

reproduced when STS students read the treatises of Karl Marx instead of

W. E. B. Du Bois—both theorize the relations between capitalism, democ-

racy, and inequality1—or when STS scholars study white laboratories and

pay scant attention to how normalized racial hierarchies are embedded in

both the technologies and knowledge production of normal science (Ben-

jamin 2016). For example, Weheliye’s (2014) recent book, Habeas Viscus,

argues that theories of biopolitics and bare life exemplified in the works of

Foucault (1980, 1997, 2008) and Agamben (1998, 2005) underestimate the

significance of race in constructions of what is human. This body of liter-

ature, often employed in STS research and teaching, Weheliye (2014)

posits, is plagued by a strong “anti-identity politics” strain in the Anglo-

American academy, which epistemologically constrains what materializes

as the object of knowledge. This intellectual oeuvre, which patiently attends

to the ways in which white, male, and Western conceptions of what it means

to be human, curtails alternative models of being and modes of knowledge

construction liminal to the Western order (McKittrick 2015; Weheliye

2014). I am not suggesting that in this reflective moment we remake STS

into something it is not, but rather that we take a stand(point) and acknowl-

edge the persistence of legacies of white male supremacy and Eurocentrism

in the work of even progressive STS scholars (Harding 2008, 2009). Such a

stand(point) would pay close attention to the changing forms of racializa-

tion embedded in the construct of undone science, which, in turn, repro-

duces STS education and inquiry as a white space.

Historians, Fouche (2003, 2) argues, “have ignored technology as an

institutionalized force that marginalizes Black people within American

society and culture.” This white space was reproduced most recently when

the scientific community, which is largely white, heterosexual, cisgender,

able-bodied, and male, marched in April 2017 in more than 350 cities across

the United States against budget cuts to science-related federal agencies

such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes

of Health (NIH). Yet that same scientific community competes for science-

related funding that helps to design weapons and more intrusive forms of

surveillance that are ultimately used to dispossess and annihilate mostly

people of color all over the world. These largely white, heterosexual, cis-

gender, able-bodied, and male scientists are also the professors at academic

154 Science, Technology, & Human Values 43(2)

institutions and national laboratories, white spaces that continue to remain

segregated, many of them increasingly hostile places for students, staff, and

faculty of color (FOC; Feagin, Vera, and Imana 1996; Mascarenhas, Mena,

and Sodolo 2016). For example, in the fall of 2013, a black student at San

Jose State University had a bicycle lock cinched around his neck by white

students from his dormitory, who took to calling him “three-fifths,” while

hanging a Confederate flag and Nazi symbols in the dormitory room. At

Yale University, a fraternity turned away black guests at a Halloween party,

announcing that only white women would be admitted. At the University of

Mississippi, a noose and a Confederate flag were draped on a statue of

James Meredith, the University’s first black student. Racist graffiti has been

found on the campuses of Wayne State University, Eastern Michigan, and

University of Michigan, and in November 2015, chilling racist death threats

posted to an online forum were made to all students at Howard University, a

traditionally black college.

However, reducing campus racism to hostile acts alone obscures the role

of more pervasive and subtle forms of institutional racism that also occur

everyday in the lives of students of color (in classroom interactions, during

group work, and at social events, in admission policies, to name a few

spaces). These multiple and intersecting forms of systemic discrimination

are in part responsible for the maintenance, normalization, and in some

instances widening of the racial achievement gap in postsecondary educa-

tion, and in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, in

particular. For example, recent efforts by the NIH and NSF to focus on the

retention of women and students of color have been unable to stem the tide

of a steady decline of African American students in engineering programs

over the last decade (NSF 2017; see Figure 1).

We can see a similar color line in many STS departments and programs

in the United States. Some have only one FOC (see Table 1). Moreover, in

thinking about white spaces, it is important to note that what many whites

see as “diverse,” people of color may perceive as homogeneously white and

relatively privileged (Anderson 2015). For example, recent diversity efforts

have focused on targeted recruitment of underrepresented faculty of color

(UFOC) with little attention to changing the environment—personally,

intellectually, theoretically, or institutionally—they enter. McIntosh

(1988) defines white privilege as unearned race advantage and conferred

dominance. White privilege, Pulido (2000) argues, thrives in highly racia-

lized societies that espouse racial equality, but in which whites will not

tolerate either being inconvenienced in order to achieve racial equality or be

denied the full benefits of their whiteness. In other words, white privilege is

Mascarenhas 155

deeply hegemonic because it works through consent and not force (Gramsci

1971, [1935] 2000). For example, in her recent book Poison in the Ivy: Race

Relations and the Reproduction of Inequality on Elite College Campuses,

Byrd (2017) finds that students at elite colleges are blind to the structural

inequalities limiting people’s access to the same educational spaces—white

spaces—that they seem to “naturally” fit in, effectively rationalizing their

position in elite spaces with color-blind conceptions of merit and

individualism.

Institutionalized white supremacy is not new to academia. For example,

elite white universities at the turn of the twentieth century did not hire nor

were interested in collaborating with black scholars, even the brilliant W. E.

B. Du Bois (Morris 2015). Moreover, white scholars were not interested in

producing a scientific body of knowledge to combat scientific racism. This

idea about black inferiority and inequality was later embraced by the Chi-

cago School of Sociology in the 1920s. Du Bois’s The Philadelphia Negro

was largely ignored for decades by Robert Parks, Ernest Burgess, and other

white sociologists at Chicago. This white space of elite intellectual net-

works and schools of thought effectively ignored the contribution of a

generation of black scholars. Culminating in the fact that today, the Chicago

School of Sociology is still considered the birthplace of American sociol-

ogy, while the Du Bois–Atlanta School of Sociology is most often ignored

in questions regarding the epistemic and institutional practices of science

and technology (Morris 2015).

6.26.0 5.9 5.8

5.6 5.65.4 5.3 5.3

5.1 5.0

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4.0

5.0

6.0

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2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

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Figure 1. Black undergraduate enrollment in engineering programs (2003-2013).

156 Science, Technology, & Human Values 43(2)

Table 1. Gender and Race of Some STS Departments and STS Programs in theUnited States.

Institution Faculty

Gender Race

M F %F FOC %FOC UFOC %UFOC

Arizona State (STSProgram)

44 23 21 48 6 14 2 5

Bard College (STS Program) 16 9 7 44 2 13 0 0Brown (STS Program) 41 19 22 54 4 10 2 5Cornell (STS) 19 9 10 53 2 11 1 5Drexel (STS)a 27 18 9 33 1 4 0 0Harvard (STS) 42 28 14 33 5 12 0 0John Hopkins History of

Science & Technology17 10 7 41 0 0 0 0

MIT (STS) 15 10 5 33 2 13 1 7Princeton (STEP) 21 17 3 14 1 5 0 0Rensselaer Polytechnic

Institutea15 11 4 27 2 13 0 0

Stanford (STS Program) 39 25 14 36 12 31 2 5UC Berkeley (STS Program) 79 35 44 56 4 5 1 1UC Davis (STS) 22 14 8 36 4 18 2 9UC San Diego Science

Studies Program23 10 13 57 2 9 1 4

University of Chicago atIllinois

38 24 14 37 2 5 1 3

U Michigan (STS) 44 21 23 52 6 14 2 5History and Sociology of

Science40 26 14 35 1 3 1 3

U Virginia (STS Program) 11 7 4 57U Wisconsin (STS) 69 38 31 45 7 10 1 1Vassar (STS) 18 8 10 56 0 0 0 0Virginia Tech (STS) 39 19 20 51 1 3 1 3Worcester Polytechnic

Institute Social Science &Policy Studiesb

18 9 9 50 3 17 2 11

Yale History of Science andMedicine

10 5 5 50 1 10 0 0

Note: FOC ¼ faculty of color; UFOC ¼ underrepresented faculty of color (Hispanic, Latino,African America, Native American, and Pacific Islander).aVery white and male.bUFOC disproportionately located at the contract side of the academy.

Mascarenhas 157

Feminist perspectives and theories, in particular, have been at the fore-

front of efforts to expand the scope of STS theory and research and offer a

model for how STS scholarship that is more attentive to race and racism

may have a transformative effect on the field. Haraway (1997, 35) main-

tains that “either critical scholars in antiracist, feminist cultural studies of

science and technology have not been clear enough about racial formation,

gender-in-the-making, the forging of class, and the discursive production of

sexuality through the constitutive practices of technoscience production

themselves, or the science studies scholars aren’t listening—or both.”

Standpoint theories (Hartsock 1983; Longino 1994), strong objectivity

(Harding 1991, 1993, 1998; Hartsock 1983; Longino 1994), and situated

knowledges (Haraway 1991, 1997) argue for a politics and epistemology of

location, position, and situation, where partiality and feminist standpoints,

and not universality, are the precondition for knowledge-making politics.

More recently, a special issue of Science, Technology, & Human Values

(Pollock and Subramaniam 2016) explores the importance of feminist post-

colonial STS to our understandings of technoscience, especially how power

matters for epistemology and justice.

Today, STS scholars and departments have cultivated robust interdisci-

plinary networks, disciplines, and programs. For example, many depart-

ments have developed curricula and hired faculty in sustainability studies

and STS. The same can be said for big data, digital humanities, science

fiction, design, and medicine. The military, space, women’s studies, and

even food and animal production have become popular subject matters and

fields of inquiry among STS scholars. But race and racism continue to

remain a dark matter of STS inquiry, as STS scholars rarely enter the deep

waters of black studies or black feminism. We study normal, undone, and

street science; artifacts, boundary objects, trading zones, and laboratories

fascinate us at a time when knowledge is increasingly being produced

outside of laboratories by street scientists, many of them people of color.

We also include primates, scallops, dinosaurs, and sheep in our analysis.

Yet we rarely engage the critical insights and rigorous scholarship of black

studies or other forms of critical ethnic studies in our multisited, multi-

sighted, and multispecies discipline. This omission continues at a time when

research indicates that minorities (students, faculty, and staff) in racially

isolated educational settings are at risk of significant harm including stereo-

typing and discrimination that can undermine their academic aspirations

and scholarly achievement. This is particularly the case in STEM where

minority numbers are especially low and the norms and behaviors of major-

ity groups dominate (Steele and Aronson 1995, Steele 2008, Steele,

158 Science, Technology, & Human Values 43(2)

Spencer, and Aronson 2002). As a consequence, we continue to write peo-

ple of color out of this intellectual community and disciplinary field, ensur-

ing its changing but the same characteristic as a white space.

A “Changing Same” Character

Race, according to British sociologist Gilroy (1993), has a changing same

character. It is in constant flux and continuously remade by social processes,

and I want to point out a few examples of this white space in the networks and

institutions of STS today. However, before we examine these white spaces, I

want to acknowledge the US-centric focus of this analysis, right down to the

various (explicit and implicit) definitions of minorities. The 4S is, and always

has been, an international society. A similar project vis-a-vis racialization

and the white space from a European perspective would look to other his-

torical and racial legacies that have been discriminatory to other minority

groups, such as the Turks in Germany or Pakistanis in England.

We can look at US STS departments and programs to get a sense of their

homogeneity. Institutions were selected based on Internet searches of asso-

ciation websites, publication portals, and academic institutions. The list is

not meant to be exhaustive, and STS programs, such as those at Berkeley,

Stanford, and ASU, comprise faculty with differing responsibilities and

tenure homes across the institution. Lastly, the gender and race of STS

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Gender %F

Race %FOC

Race %UFOC

Figure 2. Gender and race of some STS departments in the United States.

Mascarenhas 159

faculty were identified by the analysis of department, program, and personal

webpages during the fall of 2016 and spring of 2017.

Table 1 and Figure 2 illustrate the gender and race composition of some

of the largest STS departments and programs in the United States. Some

programs have made important gains in terms of gender balance. For exam-

ple, in the Science, Technology and Society Programs at the University of

California, Berkeley, the University of Michigan, and Brown University,

women outnumber men. Yet this is the exception as most STS programs and

departments are still male dominant. The STS program at Stanford and

Departments at RPI and Drexel are particularly homogeneous. It is also

worth noting that society leadership (Table 2) has seldom been female, even

though council membership (Table 3) over the last decade is at parity by

gender. This institutional glass ceiling is analogous to the difference

between becoming CEO and serving on the board of directors.

We see significant disparities in FOC and major gaps in UFOC—His-

panic, Latino, African Americans, Native American, and Pacific Islan-

der—at these elite institutions. In fact, many STS departments have no

UFOC at all. Moreover, while some places like WPI may seem diverse,

most FOC at WPI and other academic institutions do not hold privileged

Table 2. Past Presidents of 4S.

Decade # M F %F FOC %FOC UFOC %UFOC

1975-1985 6 5 1 17 0 0 0 01986-1995 5 4 1 20 0 0 0 01996-2005 5 4 1 20 1 20 0 02006-2015 5 3 2 40 0 0 0 0

Note: FOC ¼ faculty of color; UFOC ¼ underrepresented faculty of color (Hispanic, Latino,African America, Native American, and Pacific Islander); 4S ¼ Society for Social Studies ofScience.

Table 3. Past Council Members (per Decade).

Decade # M F %F FOC %FOC UFOC %UFOC

1975-1985 33 27 6 18 0.0 0.01986-1995 30 15 15 50 1 3.3 0.01996-2005 26 10 16 62 1 3.8 1 3.82006-2015 30 15 15 50 6 20.0 1 3.3

Note: FOC ¼ faculty of color; UFOC ¼ underrepresented faculty of color (Hispanic, Latino,African America, Native American, and Pacific Islander).

160 Science, Technology, & Human Values 43(2)

tenure-track positions like their white colleagues. In effect, UFOC are

disproportionately employed on the margins of the academy as instruc-

tors, adjuncts, research scientists, assistant teaching professors, and pro-

fessors of practice. As a consequence, leadership of STS departments and

programs in the United States remains a privilege of the white race.

Moreover, while the analysis is written in percentages, we are often talk-

ing about one person of color in a department, and in this sense creating a

microminority environment, where acts of discrimination from overt

racism to microaggressions are normalized and infrequently challenged

(Mascarenhas and Grindstaff under review).

I was struck by the candid response of Marybeth Gasman, the professor of

Higher Education in the Graduate School of Education at the University of

Pennsylvania, to a question pertaining to the lack of FOC in higher education,

especially elite institutions. Her reply was simply “we don’t want them.” She

then went on to cite five reasons why the academy remains a white space.

These reasons included quality, quantity (there is not enough of us), playing

by the rules, fit, and, I think the most important reason, no will. The word

“quality,” Gasman (2016) notes, is often used by white faculty when talking

about increased diversity. Typically, quality means that the potential candi-

date didn’t go to an elite institution for their PhD or wasn’t mentored by a

prominent person in the field. Gasman argues that most of us are aware of this

social problem but rarely do something to diversify our department or insti-

tution’s faculty. “Having a diverse faculty—in terms of race, ethnicity, gen-

der, sexuality, religion—adds greatly to the experiences of students in the

classroom” (Gasman 2016, 1). It challenges them to think differently about

who produces knowledge, a subject matter at the core of STS. “It also chal-

lenges them to move away from a “White-centered” approach to one that is

inclusive of many different voices and perspectives” (Gasman 2016, 1).

We can look more broadly at 4S in light of Gasman’s observations. Table

2 identifies the gender and race composition of our Society’s past presi-

dents. During its forty-year history, members have elected one president of

color—Sheila Jasanoff. Similarly, we can also reflect on the lack of diver-

sity among our past council members over the last four decades. Of the 119

past council members, 8 have been FOC and 2 have been UFOC (Table 3).

We can also examine Program Highlights from the 2015 4S Conference,

which included a Presidential Plenary in which eight scholars reflected once

again on important issues to STS. The panel included five women and three

men but zero underrepresented scholars, and the three panelists from the

United States were predictable white. These esteemed scholars talked about

democracy, design, digital technologies, and even environmental pollution,

Mascarenhas 161

but not one of them talked about matters of diversity, race, or racism. In the

269 panels that constituted the 2015 annual meeting, the word “race” was

found in six titles and racism in two. At a time when, as Davis (2016, 17)

points out, “racism can be discovered at every level in every major institu-

tion—including the military, the health care system, and the police”—when

racism should be front and center in our scholarship, only 8 of the 1,489

panelists thought it important enough to do so.

Lastly, I want to suggest that this white space is not limited to number of

faculty, presiders, and presenters at our annual meetings. Nor is this white

space limited to the explicit and implicit curricula we teach in our classrooms.

It also includes the journals we publish in whose topics and editorial boards

also constitute white spaces. The same may be said of our national funding

agencies, such as the NSF and NIH in the United States, and other funding

agencies, whose program officers and review panels remain predominantly

white. Moreover, in the United States, decades-long attempts to broaden par-

ticipation of underrepresented groups by the NSF and other federal granting

agencies have often been challenged by lawmakers and others who feel that

such initiatives are a form of reverse discrimination. My recent experience as

the only reviewer of color on a recent NSF review panel was equally discoura-

ging and indicative of the gap that divides effort from will. All of this

together—curricula, composition of faculty and administration, granting insti-

tutions and editorial bodies, and disciplinary leadership and scholarly con-

tent—constitute the changing same white space of STS.

We have maintained this white space while racism on American campuses

(where many of us work) remains a national concern. Racist graffiti painted

on the side of a women’s center on the Eastern Michigan University campus

is the latest case. There have been similar incidents at Yale, University of

Missouri, University of Oklahoma, University of Michigan, Wayne State

University, and San Jose State University and death threats at Howard Uni-

versity, a traditionally black college. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is not

without its incidents either, as demonstrated by a noose hung from a tree, and

a post in Reddit warning white students to “never relax around blacks.” Yet

racism, sexism, homophobia, islamophobia, and xenophobia are not limited

to college campuses, as egregious and everyday examples are increasingly

displayed on our streets, screens, and tweets. Moreover, recent court chal-

lenges to affirmative action policies have all but insured that students of color

will continue to lose ground in educational achievement in the United States.

For example, a 1998 policy study examining the effect of recent affirmative

action bans conducted by the American Association for the Advancement of

Science reported a precipitous one-year drop of over 20 percent from 1996 to

162 Science, Technology, & Human Values 43(2)

1997 for first-year graduate enrollments of African Americans in all science

and engineering fields. The decline for Latino/Latina Americans entering

graduate studies was equally dramatic, falling 16.2 percent between 1996 and

1997 for all science and engineering fields, after three prior consecutive years

of gains (Malcom et al. 1998).

Today, our academic institutions remain a white space at a time when the

nonwhite students have outnumbered the white students in the US K-12 stu-

dent population (Gasman 2016; Mitchell 2016). And this is particularly true in

the STEM disciplines, the research and teaching sites for many of us in STS. In

2014, for example, 9,568 doctorates were awarded in engineering, many of

them going on to be future faculty and leaders of industry and government—

the same government that funds our research. Only (167 or) 1.7 percent of these

doctorates were awarded to African Americans and (243 or) 2.5 percent to

Hispanics. Similarly, for every 100 students matriculated in medical schools,

only 15 are students of color (American Educational Research Association

2015). In 2012, a total of 1,690 doctorates were awarded in computer science,

39 were awarded to blacks (2 percent), 26 to Hispanics (1.5 percent), and 2 to

American Indians (0.1 percent; American Educational Research Association

2015). Moreover, only one in three African American men admitted to college

will graduate with a college degree (American Educational Research Associ-

ation 2015). These institutions are not simply white in number, they are white

in culture, and it is this culture of white privilege that ensures that college life

and achievement remain separate and unequal. In my recent ethnographic

research with students of color, many of them expressed being severely stig-

matized and segregated on college campus. I can’t imagine they are alone in

their experience (Mascarenhas, Mena, and Sodolo 2016). Similar findings are

described in the Agony of Education. Black Students at White Colleges and

Universities (Feagin, Vera, and Imana 1996).

How is it possible to have this tremendous degree of racial inequality in a

country where some state governments and popular referenda, typified in

the actions of the Fifth Circuit Court (Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi) in

Hopwood v. The State of Texas and Proposition 209 in California, have

abolished affirmative action arguing it is no longer necessary? Such policies

have led to greater declines in both college attendance and graduation rates

for underrepresented students of color in various graduate fields of study

including engineering and the natural sciences (Garces 2015; Hinrichs

2012; Malcom et al. 1998). This color-blind perspective to science, tech-

nology, and society proliferates at a time when neoliberal racism (Mascar-

enhas 2012) fuses technologies of conduct and governance with racial

domination. Science and technology continue to direct the processes by

Mascarenhas 163

which racial categories are reasoned, created, transformed, and legitimized.

Uncovering the mechanisms and practices that continuously reproduce

Western conceptions of what it means to be human is an important first

step (Said 1979; Weheliye 2014), but we also have to cultivate the will to

change this distinctive racial formation of modern America.

STS and White Privilege

It is time that our institutions, their faculty, and administrators recognize

that science and technology are both constitutive of racial hierarchies and

informed by them, continually contributing to the material and discursive

formations of new racialized regimes from incarceration and education to

toxic waste and ill-health (Alexander 2012; Brown 2007; Bullard 1990;

Bullard et al. 2008; Mascarenhas 2012; Sze 2007; Zimring 2016). Thinking

about the next forty years should begin by asking ourselves what will

happen to the field of STS if it continues to be a white space? Alternatively,

can we conjure a vision and solidify a mission to diversify our departments,

our institution’s faculty, the curricula we teach, our discipline, and our

students? Deeply rooted patterns of prejudice and discrimination will

require both the will of the intellect and the appropriate institutional

resources to unsettle and undo the white space of STS.

STS, of course, is not alone in creating, maintaining, and condoning

white privilege and white supremacy. Distinguished professor of education

Yvonna Lincoln (Lincoln and Guba 1987) has observed that the social

sciences should pay more attention to a person’s social location within

constructed contexts. This reflection, Lincoln argues, is true for the people

and objects we study, as it is for ourselves. Sociologist Duneier (1992) has

taken a more direct tone, asserting that the ethnographic tradition has cre-

ated an industry out of confirming inaccurate stereotypes about black men

that would be unacceptable if made about white ethnic groups.

STS curricula must include race and racism as core concepts; we must

actively recruit and support students, staff, and FOC; we must have gender

and race equity on committees, review panels, and editorial boards. It is no

longer acceptable to have panels of esteemed colleagues expound about

future directions without the participation of people of color, and theirs

cannot be token participation. We must guard against white fragility and

increasingly popularized forms of white supremacy and recognize that

something is lost in white society when it does not acknowledge its “dark

matter” (Winant 2015). This knowledge will not be cultivated by simply

adding more people of color to the mix, white students, white staff, and

164 Science, Technology, & Human Values 43(2)

white faculty have indispensable roles to play. At a time when we are

urged to settle for fast solutions, make policy via Twitter, look for easy

answers, and formulaic resolutions, we must find the wherewithal to con-

front racism and awaken people to the urgency of building antiracist

movements (Davis 2016).

This diversity of people, ideas, and politics will expand our “problem

choices” and turn our attention to the uncomfortable silences of our field,

such as who is participating, who is affected, and how policy promotes or

hinders such efforts. Culturally appropriate teaching and learning tools and

pedagogy are imperative to advance such efforts (Tatum 1997; Eglash et al.

2016; Freire 2011; Gay 2010). This much-needed social movement can

only be realized if we take these concerns seriously, build political coali-

tions between groups that are differently targeted within white supremacy,

and find the collective will to think about this intellectual and political

moment much more broadly.

Author’s Note

The idea for this article came from an invitation to participate in “Where has STS

Traveled,” a gathering of the fortieth anniversary of the inaugural meeting of the

Society for Social Studies of Science.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Professors Trevor Pinch and Michael Lynch for hosting this

important milestone and would also like to thank Ed Hackett for providing the

intellectual space for this article in this important disciplinary journal. Lastly, I

would like to thank the three reviewers whose thoughtful comments and detailed

revisions have greatly improved the final version.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,

authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or

publication of this article.

Note

1. Some might suggest that Du Bois’s notion of two proletarians—white and

black—provides a more robust paradigm for thinking about capitalism than the

class structures put forward by both Marx and Weber.

Mascarenhas 165

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Author Biography

Michael Mascarenhas is an associate professor in the Department of Environ-

mental Science, Policy and Management at the University of California, Berkeley.

He is the author of New Humanitarianism and the Crisis of Charity. Good Inten-

tions on the Road to Help (2017) and Where the Waters Divide Neoliberalism,

White Privilege, and Environmental Racism in Canada (2012). His scholarship

examines the relationship between the culture of neoliberalism, the governance of

water, and the politics of racial injustice on historically marginalized groups,

populations, and regions.

170 Science, Technology, & Human Values 43(2)